Halfway through the 30-day legislative session

“This still feels like a session of hopes and possibilities,” State Sen. Bill Soules, D-Doña Ana, said about the second session of the 57th New Mexico Legislature that began Jan. 20 in Santa Fe and reached its mid-point earlier this week. The 30-day session is focused on the state budget and bills introduced by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham or bills introduced by legislators that have a message from the governor identifying them as priorities for the session.

“The Senate came out with a very active agenda and passed bills the very first week over to the House,” Soules said, and some of those bills have already been sent to the governor. “That’s unprecedented. That feels really hopeful,” said Soules, who lives in Las Cruces and was elected to the state Senate in 2012 and re-elected in 2016, 2020 and 2024. “But there’s still a long way to go.”

New Mexico has “a lot in reserves and a lot to spend,” as growth continues in oil and gas production in the state, said state Rep. Rebecca Dow, R-Doña Ana, Sierra and Socorro, a member of the House Appropriations and Finance Committee. But, Dow said, while the budgets of state agencies are growing, a lot of the money is going to employee entitlements and litigation, while direct services are being cut. The state’s budget has nearly doubled since Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, took office in 2019, Dow said, but New Mexicans “remain the poorest in the nation. Something is wrong, and it’s broken policies.”

An example, Dow said, is universal childcare, which she said “is not a basic human right. What matters is that it’s affordable, high quality and that it is sustainable,” said Dow, who has a 30-year career as a provider of childcare services. Progressives are trying to create an entitlement program with no co-pay from parents or employers, she said.

“There must be some kind of co-pay,” Dow said, especially when federal childcare tax credits offset those costs. 

Dow founded a technology and consulting company in Truth or Consequences, along with Sierra County nonprofits that provide early care, education, home visits, college and career prep and comprehensive support “to help children and their families thrive,” according to dowforhouse.com.  Dow, who lives in T or C, represented District 38 in the New Mexico House, 2017-22. She gave up her House seat to run for governor in 2022, finishing second among five candidates in the Republican primary. Dow defeated incumbent Democrat Tara Jaramillo to win the House seat back in 2024. Nearly half the voters in the district live in Doña Ana County, she said.

Because crime prevention is also a major topic in this legislative session, a number of “public safety policy bills are out there, coming directly from police, courts and prosecutors,” Dow said. “We have to change competency. We have to hold people responsible to protect them from hurting themselves and others. Immediate and early interventions” are also needed for juveniles, so they also are held accountable.

Dow said she is encouraged because legislation she has introduced in the current session to reform the state Children, Youth and Families Department was not “dead on arrival” in House committees. Dow said there is bi-partisan support for reforming CYFD, which oversees child protective services and juvenile justice services in the state.

“New Mexico is desperate for reforms,” Dow said. “We need mindful, intentional lawmaking that puts public good over politics. Ideology has to step aside.” The state also needs a balance of power in Santa Fe. “We can’t have one party in charge of the judicial, executive and legislative branches.”

Republicans and Democrats in the legislature are also working together to improve state conservation practices, Dow said, including forest management, improving watershed and supporting treatment of brackish water so it can be used for industrial purposes and preserve the state’s freshwater supply.

Soules said he is concerned about adequate funding for some areas of education in the state because increases in oil and gas revenues are not as robust this year as they have been in the past. He is hopeful the legislature will pass a one-two percent salary increase for educators, and an 80 percent (employer)-20 percent (employee) insurance-cost split, which other state employees got last year, Soules said. He also hopes that legislation will compensate school districts, including Las Cruces Public Schools (LCPS), that have already enacted the 80-20 split. 

“That’s a good thing,” said Soules, a retired educator and former member of the LCPS Board of Education who is chair of the Senate Education Committee and the joint Legislative Education Study Committee. “It shows the state and the district value public education and teachers as they do other employees.”

There are “really good, positive things coming out about education in New Mexico,” Soules said, including “powerful early childhood education programs (that are) revamping early learning.”

Each of New Mexico’s 42 state senators is likely to receive about $4.1 million for capital outlay this year, as well as about $600,000 in other discretionary funds to spend over two years, he said.

“There is still a lot of one-time (non-recurring) money.”

Recurring revenues will be impacted by federal funding cuts to the state, Soules said, some of which “are still a year or two out.”

“The state has some 32-33 percent cash reserves,” Soules said, with each one percentage point worth about $110 million. “We are a wealthy state. We don’t want to get back into this scarcity mindset that we don’t have money.”

“I think the state has come a long way” during Lujan Grisham’s nearly eight years as governor,” Soules said. “I always push that the future of New Mexico is in our children and we ought to be making the big investments there. I am hopeful for our future.”